What if there is something?
Death, mourning, and the Christian faith
Searching for guidance in a haze of questions
“Last week, I was interviewed by a student for her thesis on the themes of death, grief, and the Christian faith. This story is written from her perspective.”
About grief, religion, and the questions you can’t shake
A year and a half ago, my cousin passed away. She was only a year older than me. She had been ill for a long time, so in a way we knew it was coming—but that doesn’t make the blow any less painful. I remember how lost I felt in a haze of questions. Why her? Where do you find solace? What do you do with all that grief when you were raised as an atheist and, emotionally, there is no one to hold on to?
I am not religious and probably never will be. But this loss has changed my perspective. I started exploring religions, reading stories, and seeking out people with different outlooks on life. Not to convert, but simply to understand. Because I thought: there must be something, right? An idea or a story that offers more comfort than: “She’s dead, and that’s it.”
Religion or faith — they’re not the same thing
One of the people I spoke to was Wim, an evangelical Christian who has been at the center of life for decades — with his own loss and his own experiences with illness and death. One of the first things he said stuck with me: religion and faith are not the same thing. Religion, he described it, is the human form. The institutions, the rituals, the rules. Faith is much more personal; something you can’t capture in a church building or a law book.
I understood that. I’ve never been attracted to the organized side of religion — the obligations, the hierarchy, the oppressive feeling of being tied to an institution. But the idea that there is more than this, that there is something higher, something or someone who cares about you? That feels less strange than I always thought. Maybe faith is exactly that: the deep feeling that you are not alone.
The bird
My brother was one of the first to see her in those last weeks. She asked him — very directly, as she was — what he thought would happen after death. My brother is down-to-earth and rational. He thinks: nothing. Black. But you don’t say that to someone who is dying. So he told her something about reincarnation, about coming back as an animal. He asked her: “If you could choose, what would you want to come back as?”
She said: “As a bird. Then I can fly anywhere. Then I can keep seeing everything.”
I still think about that. Not because I believe she is actually flying around as a bird, but because the idea apparently gave her comfort in those last days. I find that remarkable. That even though we don’t believe in anything, we still search for an image or a story that makes it more bearable.
The vision of an atheist
Wim told me about a man he had interviewed. The man had been raised as an atheist, had never set foot in a church, and harbored a deep hatred for his father—so deep that he even scratched his father’s surname off his school reports. A life miles away from religion.
And yet, when that father was on his deathbed, he suddenly stared at the wall. The son saw nothing, but the father said, “I see three crosses. And the middle one gives light.”
For a Christian, that is an obvious symbol: Golgotha. But this man did not know that story, or at least not in a way that had ever touched him. Yet this was his last experience.
I’m not sure what to make of that. Someone else might say: dying brain, chemistry, hallucinations. Maybe that’s true. But I find that I don’t want to just brush it aside. The image is very specific, and the man had never asked for it.
Grief has no model
Something that has been on my mind for a while: why does almost no one talk about it after the funeral? There is a lot of grief. We move on to the order of the day, have coffee and cake and talk about the upcoming vacation, while everyone is walking around with grief. There is a service, people stand around the grave, and then everyone goes home, while you are left with a feeling that has nowhere to go.
Wim said something that I immediately recognized: grief has no model. Everyone does it differently. An introvert withdraws; an extrovert seeks out company and talks about it. He told me about a couple who lost their child and grew so far apart in their grief that they eventually divorced. Not because the love was gone, but because they no longer understood each other’s way of grieving.
He also told me about his neighbor, who lost her husband years ago. When someone asked her if she was feeling any better, she replied, “It seems to be getting worse. No spring, just a never-ending winter.” That’s one of the most honest things I’ve ever heard about grief. We always expect time to heal all wounds, but sometimes it just doesn’t work that way.
I read a quote somewhere from a Flemish grief expert who compares grief to a shadow. You always carry it with you. Sometimes you turn a corner and suddenly it’s there again, life-size, simply because the light is shining from the other side. That’s exactly how it feels. That sudden “oh.” The moment when you are suddenly overcome with grief again, just when you thought it had finally eased a little.
Death is not a ‘good death’
The book I am reading for my research talks about a “good death”: a death you can prepare for, where you can say goodbye and have lived the way you wanted to. I explained this to Wim. He didn’t hesitate for a moment: “Death is the last enemy.” That’s what it says in the Bible, but he felt it himself too.
I agree with him. My niece was 21. She had her whole life ahead of her. And although she had been ill for a long time and her death was, in a sense, a release from her suffering, there is nothing “good” about the fact that she is no longer here. There is nothing to embellish about that loss.
At the same time, Wim said something that surprised me: he doesn’t believe that God causes illness. He doesn’t believe that God flips a switch and decides when you die. “I don’t want to associate God with death or evil,” he said. Only with peace, love, and goodness. I find that a much more beautiful image than that of an omniscient director who calls the early death of a 21-year-old girl a “plan.”
Taking something without believing everything
This conversation—and all the other conversations for my research—did not make me religious. But it did change my perspective. I now understand that you can take something from a belief system without having to buy the whole package. That you can say: this idea, this story, or this ritual helps me right now.
I see that more and more in my generation. We weren’t raised to be religious, but we are searching. We pick what we can use: a little Buddhism here, a prayer there, or a story about reincarnation if that brings comfort at that moment. Not as a rigid system, but as a tool for survival.
Maybe that’s enough. The idea that you’re not alone. That there is something or someone moving with you, even if you can’t name it. That — if I’m completely honest — maybe there is something after all. I still don’t know. But I’m glad I finally dared to ask the question.
@wimvanputten